Hello all, I'm back from my research/vacation. While I was in Marquette, Michigan looking up information on my family I happened across this story about the Pollard Theatrical company from Australia. It a rather interesting read if you have the time. I would be interested to hear what came happened to the troup. I know they're not related to me, but I hope you enjoy it. Kim Pollard Drew, Ms Marquette Michigan The Daily Mining Journal Sat. Dec. 5, 1908 Pollard Company are globe trotters The Lilliputians have visited nearly every country in the world in their thirty years on the road The Pollard Lilliputians, who opened their initial Marquette engagement at the opera house last evening have traveled as widely, perhaps, as any theatrical company on the road, during the thirty years since their organization. The Pollards have played in almost every country on the globe and have appeared before royalty many times, the last before the Mikado of Japan. Last season the country traveled through the Orient, stopping in China, Japan, the Fast Indian Islands, the Philippines and finally landing in San Francisco last May. “Our company has been through some varied and unusual experiences during the thirty years we have been on the road,” said C. A. Pollard, manager of the company, at the Hotel Marquette yesterday. “We have been in three earthquakes and a shipwreck, but, strange to say have never been in a train wreck. At Manila in Dec., 1907 a quake struck us during the performance and rocked the theater like a cradle. The audience was thrown into a panic and doubtless lives would have been lost had it not been for the marvelous example of coolness exhibited by our Ethel Naylor, who went on the stage and sang a comedy song, holding the audience until the danger was over. We were at Sacramento at the time of the San Francisco earthquake and were once in an earthquake in New Zealand. “Every one of our thirty-four people is a native Australian, and many of the children now in the company are descendants of the original members of the company. Our cast is composed entirely of children, there being no dwarfs among them. Our stage director played a comedy part in the company when a child.” “It is strange what an awful idea strangers have of the winter climate in this northern country. For several years we would not go into northern Michigan or Canada during the winter for fear of the cold, but now our people enjoy traveling this country in winter, and find the climate far more agreeable than in many localities farther south.” “In the Orient our performers were attended almost entirely by English speaking people, and we played to crowded houses. The natives take no interest in any except their own theaters, some of which are really high class, especially in Japan.” “I find the people in America very much like those of Australia, much more so than those of Great Britain. Melbourne and Sydney contain thousands of Americans and are little different from cities of the same size in this country.” The Pollards will give and afternoon and evening performance in this city today, and will then go to Hamilton, Ont.